css Zen Garden

The Beauty of CSS Design

Presuming Competence By Design • A Tutorial for Systems, Environment, Curricular, and Materials Design in Learning Systems

Requirements

Universally-Designed Learning Materials

 

Design of Materials

Materials themselves can be designed to be more flexible - both in terms of visual design and format. We spent a great deal of time in the Barriers section on instructional materials. You can revisit that section for great ideas and resources.

 

Here, we'll summarize tips for universally designed learning materials:

• Apply effective visual design techniques such as contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity
• Provide materials in a flexible format - for example, give students an electronic copy of your syllabus in RTF format, not just a paper copy
• Design websites and web pages using CSS
• Create an option for users to change font size
• Create options for users to change colors
• Provide readings in a RTF (rich-text format) so students can modify the document, such as font size, background color and font color, and even the font
• Spend less time “talking” and more time creating images, visuals or videos of examples
• Create a website for your class where students can access materials electronically
• Post your lecture notes online in an easily modifiable format

 

Using this tutorial for training? Here's an activity related to materials.

 

Looking for a good example? Check out this idea.